Welcome! Sky Diary’s new home is here on my official site, ChrisKridler.com (the main menu is above in case you’re looking for the Chris Kridler home page, author services, books and more). I started chasing storms in 1997 and soon after that developed a website, first on America Online and then on the web. After building Sky Diary for more than twenty years in HTML, it became a bit creaky. I’m capturing the best of SkyDiary.com and transferring it to this site for a more reader-friendly experience. See the latest chase reports here on the blog and in the new index of storm chasing reports from recent years (continually updated as I add more of the archives). Stay tuned for updates.
Here we are photographing a spectacular low-precipitation supercell with mammatus over Earth, Texas, on May 16, 2021.
Cow is our loyal companion on the road.
Alethea Kontis and I completed our storm chase in Tornado Alley and hope to find lightning storms in Florida this summer. I’m slowly updating the blog with the reports (with all the driving, there’s not a lot of time to sit at the computer). You can see all the storm chasing posts from this and previous years in the blog. You can read about our adventures here and on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube (please subscribe!).
NOW ONLINE AND UPDATED: KIDSTORM! These pages are chock-full of facts about tornadoes, lightning, hurricanes and storm chasing – interesting information for kids and grown-ups, too. Go!
It may alarm you to know that I write poetry. I don’t do it as often as I used to. I’m more prosaic now, I guess. I write a lot of fiction. But once in a while, a moment strikes me. More on that in a minute. I wandered over to the central Brevard County, Florida, beaches today to take photos. It wasn’t easy …
I don’t have much to say except WOW! But I guess I should tell the story behind this unusual photo (below) of the launch of Artemis in the wee hours of November 16 from Kennedy Space Center. We weren’t able to get passes for this launch, so we weren’t anywhere close to the launch site at Kennedy Space Center. For a previous attempt, we …
We were lucky. We were lucky in Hurricane Ian, which devastated southwest Florida. And we were lucky in Hurricane Nicole, in that we’re just far enough inland that we didn’t have to worry about our house falling into the ocean. With climate change, all of the damage we’re seeing now on Florida’s east coast may become commonplace. Not that anyone wants to hear that. …
Going out in the wind today was so therapeutic. It wasn’t yet windy enough to be dangerous (except for maybe those insane people kiteboarding in the tropical storm waves), but it was invigorating. And also entangling, when it came to my hair. Tropical Storm Nicole, which soon became Hurricane Nicole, pushed big, messy waves into the Cocoa Beach Pier here on Florida’s Space Coast …
Life’s been busy, so I haven’t posted all the rocket launches I’ve shot lately from Florida’s Space Coast. And there have been a lot. While one was a United Launch Alliance jaunt, the rest were SpaceX. The gallery below includes photos from a handful of launches, including today’s SpaceX Falcon Heavy with Space Force payloads. In other words, secret defense stuff. Well, the launch …
The first Cape Canaveral Lighthouse began operation in 1849. The cast-iron version that replaced it began working in 1868. It was moved over a mile inland in the 1890s to keep it safe from erosion. The original Fresnel lens has been removed because launches were literally shaking the glass pieces out of their framework, and the light no longer rotates — or it didn’t …
It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I’ve been working on editing books and designing book covers. I launched my first collection at the Stolen Butter Gallery. I went on a road trip. And I hauled my camera here and there to shoot storms and space launches. There were highlights – for instance, a violent storm on August 26 that produced a stunning shelf …
